The possibilities for persons voluntarily and actively identifying themselves in commercial transactions are widely known and commercially available in many forms. Customers identify themselves for the purpose of affecting commercial transactions by means of personal identification numbers (PIN), magnetic cards, smart cards, and various biometric identification techniques. In general, these techniques are used when an individual desires to make his or her presence known by positive identification techniques to enable a desired goal, e.g., entry to a secure location, purchase of merchandise by credit, or obtaining funds from an ATM machine.
In the gaming industry, similar techniques have been used to enable a casino to track play of its players, enabling the casino to monitor frequent play and reward players with “comps” based on level of play. These rewards may be in the form of free room, food, and beverage, as well as free travel, merchandise, and the like. Player tracking systems using biometric identification techniques have been described in my prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,142,876 and 6,234,900.
Prior commercial customer tracking systems have generally commenced with the customer voluntarily registering at a registration location, and providing his or her name, address, and other identifying information, which may be photographic, an identifying number (such as Social Security number), or biometric information. Thereafter, the commercial establishment can identify the customer each time the customer enters a commercial zone. This is done by the customer voluntarily entering information, such as a credit card, smart card, or PIN number, and providing a confirming identification by matching biometric information with information on file. In some cases, such as set forth in my prior applications, biometric identification may be confirmed by a match with library information without the customer actively entering a PIN number, swiping a card, or otherwise actively identifying himself.
However, certain technological advances have now made it possible to consider the acquisition and maintenance of customer tracking information solely through acquisition of biometric identifying information, without a customer identifying himself to a commercial establishment in any manner whatsoever. First of all, the increasing accuracy of various biometric identification techniques, along with the greatly reduced cost of biometric identification systems, renders these systems more widely useful. In addition, the vastly decreased cost of computer processing power and memory enables the efficient storage of large volumes of information and the search of extremely large databases at extremely low cost. Together, these technological advances permit business establishments to track customers, or identify repeat visits from undesirable persons, without the identified persons having to take any action whatsoever to be tracked. The system can be linked by the establishment to other remote locations operated by the establishment.
According to the invention, a business can obtain identifying physical information on anonymous persons within their business environment. Identification can occur even without the customer knowing it can or did occur. This information can be stored in a file (a “Doe” file) in a central computer system, along with incidents of activity pertinent to those persons when within the business environment. Biometric identifying information is thereafter accumulated from each person entering the environment, and this information is compared with information within the various files in the library. This is done without active entry of any data relating to the customer at the time of the transaction by either the customer or establishment personnel. However, it should be understood that no biometric system is perfect. Therefore, as detailed below, human interaction may be required to resolve conflicts or errors encountered by a specific implemented biometric system.
If a matching identification is found, information with respect to the current commercial activity is entered into the file. If the frequency of matches, or the level of commercial activity, exceeds a predetermined level, management personnel are alerted. This enables management to actively seek to identify the highest and lowest frequency customers, acknowledging their past and/or continued activity with some action or enabling various amounts of reward for various levels of activity as management sees fit.
Information contained in the Doe file can include negative information, as well as helpful information, relating to a customer's activities. For example, the customer can be identified as a thief, or person who has bounced a check, or created a disturbance. In this case, appropriate management personnel, such as security, can be alerted.
The system of the invention is applicable to any commercial activity, such as a retail store identifying repeat customers, an airline frequent flyer, patron of a museum, or casino customer tracking activity. For convenience, the detailed description of the invention will be described with respect to a casino's ability to track customers of its gaming machines. The ability to track customers enables casinos to reward frequent players with comps and other benefits, in an effort to encourage customers to continue to play at their establishment.